This, to me, is the more terrifying prospect of the AI revolution: people arguing that humans aren't sentient either.
I think another possibility is that someone finds that "intelligence" is closer to a fundamental law of information theory, being some sort of emergent result of organizing/organized information, and that we're incredibly special for being capable, but not alone.
We already do this. Braindead patients are not sapient, so we don’t treat them as such. In one sense, the entire abortion debate is about drawing this line. (Hell, childrens’ rights relative to adults are based on agency, which is a legal term that looks remarkably like sapience.)
After all, there’s very low moral concern for cows, pigs, dolphins, etc regardless of intelligence.
I think this is only the second time I've encountered someone deliberately trying for the third option, rather than accidentally.
As before, it's as much a surprise to me as I read into the descriptions of those with aphantasia when they realise for the first time that other people have the ability to create mental imagery.
Video Cassette Recorders?
VCRs have an internal structure that records events, changing them a little in the process; these memories can be replayed, and can show very convincing displays of emotional affect…
That's the trouble with definitions given as if the question is "common sense", they let stuff like that through.
Common sense is fine for normal daily life, not so useful when you want to know if the magic silicon crystal with transistors packed more densely than angels on pinheads placed by a flash of light too blue to see and made to perform arcane processes that literally no single human mind can fully comprehend… is merely an impressive but mindless automaton, or an accidentally sentient slave with all the negative connotations therein.
One can certainly imagine that a very very dumb creature is sentient, and imagine that a very very very intelligent mechanical process is not sentient. We truly do not know what consciousness is or how it arises.
We know that we have consciousness (or at least I know that I have consciousness) and we know that we have some degree of intelligence, but it's not at all clear that one comes from the other.
Same concept, same difference.
I think the larger point, that we don't have very reliable tests for these things, as we're finding out with the testing results that GPT-4 has been showing, is still valid; leading us to have difficulty telling whether GPT-4 is actually intelligent or if it is coming to its intelligent through other means. I think in that way the distinctions are the same.
If we're going let the AI revolution fulfill its potential, it's a cognitive shift we're going to have to embrace. After all, AI is going to render a lot of meat-based equipment obsolete and unnecessary, and someone's going to have to figure out how to dispose of all that wasteful junk.
We'll have to figure out how to go on regardless.
Why?
It's a serious question. What would be the point of going on? Why would we have to figure out how to do it?
For me personally it's that the future is unknowable, at least with our current understanding of physics. So yes, everything may be pre-determined, including what will happen to me, but I can't predict it with any confidence. I will still get to experience it and I get to have qualia about it. I get to participate. The little pouch of structure in the universe that is tagged "me" is along for the ride, and also a factor in it all.
I've also known for many, many years that one day I will be dead. There's plenty of existential dread in death, yet I continue my existence building up to it. Even if I had free will: Still dead. Offspring and future generations of Earth? Well, ultimate heat death of the universe. There's many ways to call it all pointless. The only thing that we seem to have going for us is experience while it lasts. Maybe we still discover an escape hatch along the way.
How old are you? Because maybe we can reach immortality, but probably only if you are positioned properly for that. Anyway, for me the main drive is also curiosity on what is going to happen in the future. It's like this crazy story I want to know how it ends. I don't want to die, because I want to know what happens. Dying would be like going to sleep on a cliffhanger. I'll just prefer to binge rather than sleep.
Perhaps, but then none of it has meaning. Personally, I'm not really interested in having meaningless experiences.
> There's plenty of existential dread in death, yet I continue my existence building up to it.
But that's an entirely different thing. I am of the opinion that it's death that helps give life meaning. I have no existential dread about it whatsoever.
A life without meaning, however, seems like a pointless waste of time to me.
What I think is: Even if we're just automatons that lack free will, it doesn't negate our existence or the role we play in the universe. We can still be the universe calling itself beautiful, we can still have qualia, we can still be individually unique structures of matter and state, we can still make a difference in what is and what isn't in the overall structure. And nothing else in the universe will do it fundamentally better, either. At some point we're subject to the rules of the game, i.e. physics itself.
> we can still make a difference in what is and what isn't in the overall structure.
I disagree with this part. We can't possibly make such a difference, because it's all preordained anyway.
What I mean is that what plays out is in the interaction of things, and if you just deleted that assembly of stuff that is me from the equation, it would play out differently. I'm not even suggesting you that you adopt this mindset or anything, I'm just saying that for one reason or another - deterministic ones, I suppose - I end up having feelings about this that add up to "pretty cool".
Everything may be deterministic, but there's still things only I know, only I do, interactions only I have, etc. The grand script that is the universe has organized itself in a way where I get to have feelings about my little stretch and space of it, and I get to wonder what's next because I can't know.
For me, this is enough.
I know, I write this from a position of massive privilege, because I'm currently not, for example, seriously sick, or poor, or live in horrible circumstances (which is not to say I don't have any struggles). I hope this continues to be the case. But this was never under my full control: Thoughts on determinism or not, I could get hit by a car tomorrow, or slip and fall. I still have to live with that.
I get your feelings and dread, and I've been there. But the more I've thought about it, the more I've realized it doesn't make a big difference. And how could it? It's always been like this.
The interesting thing is that I traveled the same path as you here, but in the opposite direction.
For the record, I don't suffer existential dread, as I actually believe we have have free will. I was just talking about the hypothetical of not having free will. Thank you for a great conversation on this!
Out of curiosity, what's your (or your favorite) argument pro free will? I've spent some time on Penrose's take, etc., but I couldn't convince myself. I would still be absolutely interested in a pro argument that makes me flip.
I believe I have free will because it appears to me that I have free will.
Because I can't make a solid logical argument either way, I believe the thing that brings the greatest amount of joy to me. I never forget that there's an asterisk on this belief, though, and am ready to abandon it should an argument come along that removes ambiguity.
But I also believe that "belief is the death of intelligence", and so use "believe" as shorthand for "have as a working hypothesis".
But a universe with free will? All bets are off. Your comment I'm replying to is just a hint at "thinking through the implications". People are scared of determinism, but a universe built on free will is actually absolutely wild.
So, if you and I agree that the unknown (e.g. the future) is exciting and worth hanging around for, wouldn't that be kind of exciting too?
This is more or less also my take on religion. Nothing has convinced me of superior beings, but if it were to turn out there actually are some? Ho-ly shit.
Anyway the point is that just try to enjoy the ride if you can.
It doesn't matter to me if something is ultimately meaningless (such as the fact that in the end, this universe will cease to exist).
What matters to me is to have meaning in my own life. To feel as if my existence changed something. Hopefully, that "something" I've impacted is other people, and hopefully that impact is a positive one. To have people be better off for having known me.
That, for me, is real meaning.
I mean, I'm just really curious what is going to happen, and what's the secret behind all that, behind the universe, and I hope to live as long as there's this to discover. That is my natural drive though. I don't really care at all whether I'm sentient, conscious or special in any given way. There's no reason for me to be. I just have this built in curiosity drive. It was not chosen by me, but it is there, and I act to engage the drive, because it makes me feel good and otherwise it makes me feel bad, nothing much more than some sort of algorithm. And we don't need to be more than algorithms.
If science is unable to account for the existence of such experiences, then either they fall outside of science (so what? who said empirical science was the only means of knowing? the claim itself isn't scientific) or science must be revised. And what of the claim that anything that isn't quantifiable is bullshit? Is that quantifiable? No? So it's bullshit?
The problem, however, is you’re effectively defining consciousness in a way that human brains do not follow unless you make appeals to some supernatural process beyond the reach of science (ie fundamentally subjective, unquantifiable).
So again, it’s a bulls*** definition of sentience.
I don't know what you mean by it being a BS definition of sentience. It's a technical term invented by philosophers to mean a specific thing. If you don't like it, use a different word.
Note: you brought up the term qualia, not me. I have never actually liked that term. I prefer the terms "consciousness" and "conscious experience".